The Key to Success:
The Ultimate Secret

by Kevin Hogan

OK then, what IS the Key to Success, real life success where you live
the life YOU want and not the life SOMEONE ELSE tells you that you must live?

Perhaps you will pass this article along to your friends as you gain insights...

In the era of Facebook in Twitter, people like one sentence answers to questions.

Those kinds of answers don't exist for much that is truly valuable and important.

I mean, yes, the stock market is toppy at 17,000 and this is a good time to sell.
(June 15, 2014)

But if I were to explain how YOU can recognize that fact and show you in a compelling
fashion why the probability the market will be lower in two months is about 80%...
well that would take a significant discussion.

Success, real success embodies THINKING. It embodies understanding YOUR BODY and
how the BODY of each person around you...process information and think...decide.

One thing we'd talk about is a PE ratio. (The price of a stock compared to the earnings
the company is making.) Right now according to the two smartest guys I know in the
objective world of evaluating very subjective information like markets...they tell me
that the PE ratio is 26. That is high. Very high. Bear markets often begin at 26. Bull markets
often end in the same ball park. On any given Sunday, anything can happen and people
can spend thousands on a tulip (remember that story?) but suffice it to say, if
you wanted to know about what REALLY is LIKELY to happen in the markets one piece of
critical information is that PE Ratio. The last time I saw all of these key variables happen
the markets nose dived. That was 6 or so years ago.

There IS A PE Ratio of a Successful Life.

There are also numerous other critical predictors of success or failure in life.

Unfortunately buying and selling your life's happiness and financial success is NOT as easy
as it is to estimate where markets are heading.

So there will be no cute one sentence wonders in this article that answer all of life's questions.

Instead you learn the "ultimate secret" which is that PE ratio of a successful life with love,
wealth, and happiness.

Remember we're going to scratch the surface but dig out a few critical nuggets in the mean time...

Ultimately meaning in life is generated from our striving for fulfillment, the relationships that we have and the significance of our work.

Today we look at the Ultimate Key in the context of YOUR future...coming soon to a life near you.

The Ultimate Key can be used in business and in your personal life, even if you consider those two aspects of life as being different.

It's not impossible to have a success in life working for someone else. I can think of a handful of
people who have managed to do just that!

More often than not the people who are successful are the people who determine their own income. They
are in charge of their own fate in life.

This is an important point of understanding while we reach for that all important Key.

Lots of people really want to have a small Coffee Table Business but they don't know what to do...and when offered something, they often jump before looking. This is where it pays off to have another brain who has played the
game well, be at service to you.

It's not necessary to have a Coffee Table Business to be successful...but it sure can accelerate
the process and almost insure the result.

A Coffee Table Business...for YOU?!

I think about the genesis of the United States when entrepreneurs were the vast majority of providers of goods, services and jobs from North to South. Getting back to those basics is where it's all at for the individual in 2014.

Your intention is pure.

You truly want to do something in business to make your life mean something.

Not everyone is instantly ready to "start an in house business today" of course.

Of course this is why Facebook and Twitter can be such a disaster. You read me suggest
that a Coffee Table Business can be the context for success and happiness. Then the first
"opportunity" you run into is some bizarre scheme to get your family to buy stuff from
you every month. Not a great plan. And there are other disasters in TwitterThink.

Avoid This Mistake

I was mentoring a friend recently who was getting ready to start a service business. He was paying just short of $100,000 to buy a franchise (which amounted to a service truck) and the brand name. The average service call is $200. The average franchise owner does 2 each day and works 200 days per year. That's $80,000 per year before expenses and taxes. This is a recipe for a disaster.

"...my marketing plan is to hang those things from door knobs. I'll service the people who call in."

There are no easy ways to say what is going to happen next...

"You'll go broke."

That hurts so bad to say that.

It hurts worse to hear it.

The person thinks you're (me) "being negative".

No.

Not true. I'm only attempting to save them $100,000, bankruptcy and their future...that's all.

They read the Facebook post...but didn't bother to check in with someone who has a quality set of keys...

Before we come to the Ultimate Key, please read this and remember it forever:
It takes almost no time to borrow $100,000, start a business and watch it die a very quick death, and almost instantly wonder why it happened, or what went wrong.

People hate to promote, market and sell because they are trying to direct people to something that they themselves aren't on fire about.

Even when you do what you love, there are challenges. But if you are willing to promote/sell/market what you love, you don't need a loan. You don't need bankruptcy.

Important: People will succeed in ventures if they are willing to be uncomfortable doing new things they've not done in the past.

Key Point: Where things go wrong is at the intersection of you and your discomfort.

Lack of money is no longer an issue in having a Coffee Table Business. It IS an issue in almost every other business model.

A Coffee Table Business doesn't make you successful. You weave it into the tapestry of life and that's where everything good begins.

But there is a big problem EVERYONE experiences before we find the Ultimate Key!

Fear!!!

Little Known Fact: One of the biggest problems in achieving success in life, is knowing what to do when you are afraid.

When you do something you aren't familiar with, or comfortable with, or you inherently don't like, you rarely will find the stick-to-it-iveness to continue.